“Our nations are caught in the middle,” of the massive US escalation in aggression towards China, says Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua. Kapahua is the Political Education Chair for Hui Aloha ʻĀina, a Hawaiian independence party originally established in 1893 to resist the US occupation of Hawai’i. To him, the US drive towards war can in fact present “a major opportunity to start building, not just with ourselves in Hawai’i, but also with our Pacific comrades, neighbors, and cousins, to start fighting back.”

“Our ocean is the frontline in this Cold War between China and the United States,” Kapahua articulates.

Kapahua spoke to Peoples Dispatch ahead of the People’s Summit for Korea, which took place in New York City from July 25 to 26 and united struggles for national liberation across the Pacific. Kapahua expanded on a variety of topics, including how Israeli forces use the Pacific to train with the United States military, how the Trump administration is using the Pacific region for ICE operations, and overall, how the anti-imperialist movements can find opportunities to fight the US empire.

Read the full interview below:

Peoples Dispatch: What is the significance of anti-imperialism to the independence movement in Hawai’i?

Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua: US violence against the rest of the world is funneled through the Pacific. Not just Hawai’i, but Guam, and the Micronesian nations like Marshall Islands and Palau, as well as the Philippines. These end up becoming launching points for US imperialism. We’re operating both as a frontline and behind enemy lines, because the US military’s presence within our region is so massive.

The Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) is the largest military command on the planet. The US is pouring more and more resources into the Pacific every day. They’re moving more troops into the Pacific, more military equipment, and more weapons. This offers us an opportunity in the Pacific battle against that, because there are so many new weaknesses in their logistics supply chains that are being unveiled, and they’re starting to stretch themselves thin.

Military recruitment has been down for years at this point. It’s not going to go back up anytime soon, unless the US institutes a mandatory draft. We’re watching the fraying at the edges of this military apparatus.

Especially in Hawai’i, you’re starting to see the tide turn against this. The military has never been more unpopular, then maybe when they first invaded and took over, and the poisoning of the water via the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

Now as the military pivots towards confrontation with China, it’s also at the same time trying to extend and even expand its control of Hawaiian land through new land acquisitions, through the retention of current leases that are expiring.

For us in Hawai’i, this presents a major opportunity to start building, not just with ourselves in Hawai’i, but also with our Pacific comrades, neighbors, and cousins, to start fighting back. Our ocean is the frontline in this Cold War between China and the United States. Our nations are caught in the middle, having suffered over a century of dependence and domination by the United States.

PD: Is there a connection to be drawn between the independence and anti-imperialist movements in Hawai’i and across the Pacific, to the movement in solidarity with Palestine?

KK: Some people may often think just because of geography, it’s a very faraway issue, and unfortunately it’s really not.

Israel cannot exist without the support of the United States. One of the ways that they offer support in addition to the military and stuff they get is training and military exercise involvement through the United States. RIMPAC is a great example of that. The largest military wargames that take place in the entire region, the largest naval war games on the planet, they’re called the Rim of the Pacific exercises. And yet Israel is always invited and always takes part despite them.

Contrary to whatever Zionist expansionist belief, Israel doesn’t have a Pacific coast. They have no tie to the region, and yet are involved in this.

There’s these connections that can be drawn on how Israeli soldiers are able to come to the United States, and get training on occupied native land like in Hawai’i. They get to practice these mixed tactics of armored combat along with infantry support, in terms of air and naval combat.

We’ve seen that this is an all out assault, an all out siege on Gaza from all types of armed forces, be it the Israeli navy, air force and infantry forces. Them having the space to train in Hawai’i gives them the tools and the ability they need in order to go conduct this genocide in Gaza.

Stripping them of that training doesn’t necessarily end the genocide tomorrow. But what it does do is weaken their ability to carry it out. It weakens their ability to be ready to stop Palestinian resistance.

In addition, a lot of drone technology comes out of institutions in Hawai’i, like the University of Hawai’i. The Aerospace Engineering department has contracts with the US military to help develop drone technology.

PD: How do you see the Trump administration’s policies affecting Hawai’i in the broader Pacific? Is there a marked shift from Biden’s policy, or is there some continuity?

KK: While the United States has never been an ally or friend to the people of the Pacific, the Trump administration has become more hostile and aggressive. We’ve seen ICE raids expand across the United States, targeting undocumented immigrant communities all over the United States, and ripping people from their families and communities and then deporting them, whether to their actual countries of origin or even to these secondary and third nations like El Salvador, South Sudan, places that these people have no connection to.

There was a recent story that came out about COFA migrants, COFA being the Compact of Free Association, which is a an agreement the United States has with the Micronesian nations, basically allowing the US to militarily control their territory, their waters, have military access and override their sovereignty in many ways.

In return, the US allows the citizens of Micronesian nations to be legal residents within the United States. Some Micronesians have been targeted under this, despite the fact that, per the laws that are part of this international agreement, they should have legal status. But as we’ve seen, the Trump administration has gone above and beyond in targeting people.

Hawai’i has also become one of those places where they’re now holding people in the federal detention center in Honolulu, near the airport. They started moving immigrants who have been detained by the Trump administration, and then holding them in this federal detention center until the government can figure out what to do with them.

A lot of the focus has been on that new concentration camp they’re building in Florida, but they’re using many existing military facilities to hold people, and then trying to figure out where to send these people next.

Besides the federal detention center, ICE has set up on some of the military bases. One of them is the Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps base. They’ve also set up shop there.

ICE is learning and adapting, unfortunately, through experiencing the people’s resistance like we’re seeing in LA, where they were housing ICE agents and in hotels, and then people were going to those hotels and disrupting their sleep, and basically trying to harass them wherever they were.

ICE agents are being housed on military bases now, like the Marine Corps base, where people’s movements can’t access them to block them in order to kind of further enable their violence so that the tactics are sort of evolving. And unfortunately, in Hawai’i, we’re starting to see maybe even the pioneering of some of those things.

Then on the other side, outside of domestic affairs, Trump has really started escalating this Cold War with China. That is a unified policy of both parties within the United States. But Trump has really ramped up the aggression, especially in Asia, not just East Asia, but West Asia, to Iran, the US B-2 bomber strikes that took place in Iran in the month of June. They originated through bases in Missouri and other places. And then those bombers, when they finished their strikes, ended up in the Pacific. They stopped in Guam to refuel. Some of them stopped in Hawai’i.

We’re also starting to see Trump’s aggressive war fighting tactics start to expand in the Pacific and start to use our territory in these more hostile and aggressive ways.

An example of that is that the Marine Corps in the past several years has gotten rid of their tanks. They’re no longer being thought of as a vanguard force, or a tip of the spear force to fight ground battles like in the Middle East. They’re pivoting and getting rid of most of their armor, their armored vehicles to start pivoting back toward World War Two, island hopping tactics, preparing for a war in the Pacific.

They just moved a bunch of Reaper drones to Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Base. Those drones don’t have Pan Pacific Range. They’re not going to be able to cross the ocean. So that shows us that the US is pivoting toward a strategy of fighting around the islands that they control.

As the US starts to unroll and unveil these more violent, expansionary tactics, this offers a chance for us to fight back. This empire spread very thin. The Pacific is a massive place. I don’t care how big the US military is, they can’t cover all of it without severely either understaffing or abandoning posts in other parts of the world.

With their pivot to the Pacific, it also allows other places to stand up and fight back, because they’ll have diminished forces in those areas. Then also in the Pacific, the greatest logistical challenge of all time is crossing the Pacific Ocean. It offers us a chance to start striking out against some of the weaknesses that the US is inherently bringing with it as it enters the Pacific.

For example, in 2029, 40,000 acres of Hawaiian land that’s leased to the US military is up for renewal. These are really key bases for the United States installations that they cannot replicate, not just in the region, but anywhere in the world. So it offers us a chance to kind of start organizing massive popular support around revoking the leases for those bases, shutting them down, returning land to the people.

This of course benefits us in the Hawaiian independence movement, but it also strips the US of a lot of the tools they’re able to use to export violence abroad, both by themselves and through their allies and partners.

The post The United States’ “Pivot to the Pacific” provides an “opportunity” to fight empire, says Hawaiian independence activist appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.

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